"Although we are a business we are devastated to be the victims of crime, it really does upset you," Mr Rose said.

"It is no different to having your home broken into.

"There is a full review of security and we have already taken steps to ensure it can't happen again.

"But we have extremely good security, just in this day and age there are some extremely tenacious criminals who will do what they can to get round security.

"We take security extremely seriously and all of the cars have absolutely top security, but I don't want to be specific about what this particular car had as there is an ongoing police and insurance investigation."

The showroom, Tower Garage, a 1935 Grade II-listed art deco building on the Egham bypass, is currently undergoing a nine-month refurbishment which began in September last year.

Mr Rose said: "We have more people on site than we would ever normally, but we also have less cars.

"This was one of our own cars that was taken, not a customer's car. We have moved a lot of customers' cars [during the refurbishment] as we have other' locations."

The stolen Ferrari was the only one of its kind in the UK and had been parked behind the showroom at the time.

Mr Rose is hopeful the car will be recovered. Speaking of the theft, he said: "I was very surprised by it, that it was able to happen, but until I get a full picture of it there's not a lot else I can say.

"Most collectors are bona fide. Having a stolen car is like having a stolen painting, you can't do anything with it.

"There's no keys, and this makes the car very difficult to do anything with as you can only get keys through a Ferrari agent, and they can only get them from Ferrari and we have informed them of the theft so they have had the chassis blocked."